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“What should we do now?” “What should we say?”

How you answer the question “What should we do now?” can have far reaching implications for your company or organization. Preparedness and Resiliency are key brand attributes for every company. Crises come as surprises. Control of events and message are lost. Impacts accelerate. Public scrutiny intensifies.

Are you ready? How do you know? Are you sure?

Most executives are trained to make decisions based upon information, data, and policy. In a crisis,• Information is generally wrong• Data is not available• Policies do not exist• Command & Control is lost• Brand & reputation are under attack• Leadership is involved and engaged personally• Impacts are disproportional• Events are escalating• Speed is quality or even survival • You are the center of media focus

The above dynamics work aggressively against traditional empirical management decision processes. Decisions must be made quickly with limited and often incorrect information. A crisis is not business as usual. A crisis is business as unusual. Crises have a short duration, but have consequences that can determine the viability of a business or organization for years to come. If you are explaining, you are losing.

Crises have impacts – for good and bad. Every crisis starts with a combination of opportunity and danger. Where the risk/crisis conundrum balances depends upon your initial critical decisions, your crisis communications, your monitoring of events, and your adjustments made to strategy and actions as events develop. Your company’s reputation, brand, legacy, and profitability hang in the balance in a crisis. Crises are personal. Every crisis is a human crisis. It is your company. It is your people. It is your brand. It is your reputation. It is your career. Doing the wrong thing or doing nothing can create a point of no return.

Causal Relationship between Flu season and Superstorm Sandy Unlikely

Summary: Michael Olesen, Safety Officer, MN-1 DMATInstructional Faculty for St. Catherine University wrote on the possible hypothesis regarding the influenza season this year [season 2012-2013], particularly what would account for the number of cases and its early start. He discusses that we can tie some of the impact of influenza this year [2012-2013] to Hurricane Sandy. He started thinking about this during a meeting with his MN1-DMAT [Minnesota-1, Disaster Medical Assistance Team]. It was triggered by a comment about an outbreak of norovirus at the medical shelter that his team was staffing.

Analysis: Absent tracking of early clusters of influenza cases in the Hurricane Sandy shelter populations, it is unlikely that a causal relationship can be established for this year’s early flu season. The hardest hit areas of the Jersey Shore, the Rockaways, lower Manhattan, and Long Island are densely populated and have a sizable percentage of residents who regularly commute. One might postulate, therefore, that this year’s early emergence of influenza would have taken hold irrespective of Sandy’s impact.

This does not mean, however, that there is not a profound lesson here. Despite years of promotion and decades of safety and efficacy data, a shockingly small percentage of the population seeks flu shots. A little more than a third of Americans are immunized against influenza. Vaccination rates among healthcare workers are roughly twice that, but far below the CDC recommended goal of 90 percent. Considered from a different perspective, when you meet a first responder, healthcare worker, or other public servant there is a 50/50 chance this individual is not immunized. The flu is communicable before symptoms emerge (and in some cases symptoms never appear). It is more likely the early and rapid spread of influenza this year is a result of lack of prevention.

This leads back to the core recommendations for avoiding seasonal flu – timely immunization, frequent hand washing, cough etiquette, self-quarantine (stay home when you are ill), and proper diet and exercise. This is not simply a matter of passing inconvenience. Lost productivity, cost of treatment (as much as $10.5 billion this year), and the potential for deadly consequences from flu and flu-related illness (as many as 49,000 in some years) are matters of individual, corporate, and national concern. Why, then, would anyone opt to accept an easily preventable risk?

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Firestorm founders Harry Rhulen and Jim Satterfield wrote Disaster Ready People for a Disaster Ready America specifically to address the need for crisis and disaster preparedness at home, and the book has become a cornerstone of many personal and corporate preparedness programs.